The 1996 welfare law provides $15 million each year for research and demonstration projects to expand our knowledge of effective ways to improve employment and earnings among TANF recipients and other poor families. This modest but stable funding source has helped states, localities, and welfare-to-work programs design more …

A recent study on how the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program responded to increased need during the Great Recession, by Ron Haskins and Kimberly Howard of the Brookings Institution and Vicky Albert of the University of Nevada, asserts that “TANF was more responsive to the recession than critics have …